Betty Crocker Cookbook
The Betty Crocker Cookbook (Eng. Betty Crocker Cookbook ) is a general cookbook that was published on September 8, 1950 under the name Betty Crocker's Picture Cookbook for the first time by the company General Mills . It is also known as The Big Red because of its cover color , a term that General Mills had registered for himself.
The cookbook, which was a bestseller in the 1950s and was one of the standard wedding gifts, is still being published today. The cookbook was written by employees of the company and the title refers to the well-known advertising character Betty Crocker .
background
Washburn Crosby Company, the forerunner of Generals Mills, developed the advertising character Betty Crocker in 1921 to advertise the flour the company made. In the fall of 1924, the company decided to establish a radio cooking show with Betty Crocker and acquired a radio station that could be received in a region from California via Illinois to Tennessee. On October 2, 1924, the first radio cookery program was broadcast under the title Good Food . In 1925, two radio programs with distinctly different content emerged: The Betty Crocker Service Program and, on Fridays, The Betty Crocker Cooking School of the Air , which was occasionally called the Gold Medal Flour Radio Cooking School . Many listeners actively participated in this cooking show, the beginning of which attracted attention across the United States. In the first year no fewer than 47,000 listeners registered as students of this cooking show, in 1933 there were already 250,000. Those who signed up received a questionnaire about the recipes, which was sent back to the Washburn Crosby Company along with the retailer's signature confirming that the student was buying Gold Medal flour. In this way, the cookery students earned their diploma at the graduation ceremony broadcast once a year.
Under the direction of manager Marjorie Child Husted , Betty Crocker became a well-known symbol for the company. She became so well known that in 1945 Fortune Magazine chose Betty Crocker as the most popular woman after Eleanor Roosevelt .
The cookbook
The cookbook was first published on September 8, 1950, and the initial print run was 950,000 copies. The retail price was $ 3.95 for the luxury edition and $ 2.95 for a simple hardcover.
The publication was accompanied by great media interest, as the radio show Betty Crocker Magazine of the Air announced a big surprise for the day. General Mills had already delivered the cookbook to retailers the days before. It was also heavily promoted in the press. An advertisement in Ladies' Home Journal advertised the cookbook with the following words:
"Finally there! A Betty Crocker cookbook! More than $ 100,000 was spent developing and testing the recipes before even printing a single page! Just launched! Exciting, revolutionary, handsome! The result of 29 years of experience of the Betty Crocker team at General Mills with food, cooking and housekeeping. "
In the first year of its publication, The Big Red , as the cookbook was also called, was on the US bestseller list. There are only two other cookbooks in the United States that were on the market in the 1950s and have comparable sales. The Better Homes and Gardens Cook Book was published in 1930 by Better Homes and Gardens magazine and mailed to all subscribers. By 1996, 15 million copies of this cookbook had been sold. The other sales success was Irma S. Rombauer's cookbook Joy of Cooking , which Rombauer initially self-published in 1931, but which developed into a best seller from the 1940s. The edition, which was launched in 1951 and is best comparable to The Big Red as of the publication date , sold 732,004 copies between 1951 and 1958.
The media response to the Betty Crocker Cookbook was extremely positive. The Chicago Tribune called it possibly the best general cookbook ever published. The Chicago Sun-Times called it a cookbook that would not only be on the shelf and emphasized the proven quality of the recipes. The New York Times noted that this new cookbook was currently selling 18,000 copies a week, while Ernest Hemingway's latest novel only sold 3,500 copies a week.
content
The Betty Crocker Cookbook comprised 2161 recipes in 16 chapters and had, among other things, an extensive glossary . There were a total of 633 black and white photo essays that replaced the implementation of a recipe and 36 full-page color photos. It also gave suggestions for planning the menu and described how the table was set. The greatest innovation of the cookbook was the step-by-step instructions accompanied by numerous photos. A number of recipes were marked with an asterisk to indicate that they were particularly well-tried recipes. The recipes reflected a range of typical American dishes. Cake recipes were particularly extensive. In addition to standard recipes for classics of American cuisine such as Angel Cake and Red Velvet Cake , there was also a chapter that contained recipe instructions for special dessert cakes and a chapter that only dealt with cake icings.
Sarah Marks states that the cookbook can also be used to determine the changes in US eating habits. Recipes such as those that use croissant meat and rabbit meat (which is less commonly eaten in the US) suggest the proximity to the times of the Great Depression and food rationing during World War II . However, the cookbook also contains recipes and information on the use of baking mixes, bag soups and similar convenience foods . These were mostly products that did not hit grocery store shelves until after the end of World War II.
successor
The great success that General Mills had with the cookbook led to the subsequent publication of a number of other cookbooks that took advantage of the advertising power of General Mills' Betty Crocker brand. The most successful were:
- Betty Crockers's Good and Easy Cookbook
- Betty Crocker's Cookbook for Boys and Girls
- Betty Crocker's Dinner for Two Cookbook
- Betty Crocker's Cooky Book
In the 1980s, a number of Betty Crocker cookbooks appeared, which focused on the cuisine of other cultures. In addition to an “international” cookbook, there were also those devoted to Chinese , Indian and Mexican cuisine .
New editions of the Betty Crocker Cookbook reflected changed eating habits and adapted recipes to other preparation options. This did not always meet with the approval of readers, who associated Betty Crocker with the taste of their childhood. To meet this demand, General Mills reissued the original Betty Crocker's Picture Cook Book from 1950 in 1998 , followed by a new edition of the Betty Crocker's Cook Book in 2002 and the Betty Crocker's Cookbook for Boys and Girls in 2003 .
Fiction
The cookbook plays a supporting role in the 2014 novel Everything I never told you by Celeste Ng .
literature
- Susan Marks: Finding Betty Crocker: The Secret Life of America's First Lady of Food. University of Minnesota Press, 2007, ISBN 978-0-8166-5018-7 .
Single receipts
- ^ Susan Marks: Finding Betty Crocker , pp. 37 and 51.
- ^ Susan Marks: Finding Betty Crocker , p. 35.
- ^ Susan Marks: Finding Betty Crocker , p. 116.
- ^ Susan Marks: Finding Betty Crocker , pp. 133 and 135.
- ^ Susan Marks: Finding Betty Crocker , p. 134.
- ↑ Susan Marks: Finding Betty Crocker , p. 134. In the original the advertisement read: At Last! A Betty Crocker Cook Book! Over $ 100,000 spent in testing and developing recipes before a single page was printed! Just off the press! Exciting, revolutionary, handsome! The result 29 years' experience by the Betty Crocker Staff of General Mills, in food, cooking and homemaking .
- ^ Susan Marks: Finding Betty Crocker , p. 135.
- ^ Susan Marks: Finding Betty Crocker , p. 139.
- ↑ Susan Marks: Finding Betty Crocker , pp. 143-147.
- ↑ a b Susan Marks: Finding Betty Crocker , p. 147.